Physics

Pathology

Disease

Event (particle physics)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Multimedia

Medical education

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Biology

Microbiology

Dissemination

Creativity

World Wide Web

Mathematics education

Political science

Psychology

Set (abstract data type)

Student engagement

Programming language

Isolation (microbiology)

Disconnection

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Medicine

Telecommunications

Social psychology

Ecology and Evolution

COVID‐19 presented the world with trauma and isolation, but many people, including educators, have offered bright spots of creativity and engagement. As we confronted these issues in our own ecology classroom, we sought solutions to carry‐forward the learning objectives we set for our students in January 2020, yet encourage interaction with the sensitivity that a pandemic requires. In the rapid transition to online course delivery, we opted to retain the original end‐of‐semester poster project in our introductory ecology course. However, we experimented with a new virtual platform where students could disseminate their work and communicate with the community. In this paper, we discuss the Mozilla Hubs virtual reality platform that we used for our event. We also collected qualitative data to share the benefits and challenges of this experience felt by the students, the instructors, and external observers.

Thanks for inviting me to the party: Virtual poster sessions as a way to connect in a time of disconnection